OLD SCHOOL.

237 Licentiates.

435 Candidates.

231,404 Communicants.

NEW SCHOOL.

111 Licentiates.

238 Candidates.

143,029 Communicants.

The "Old School" section has 6 theological seminaries, the principal of which is that at Princeton in New Jersey, which has 4 professors and 153 students. The "New School" Church has 5 institutions of the same character, the chief of which appears to be that of New York, with 4 professors and 106 students. The Board of Missions, under the control of the Old School Assembly (the Presbyterians of the New School, as has been already mentioned, give their support to the American Board), maintain stations among the Indian tribes, in Africa, in India, in Siam, in China, in South America, and among the Jews. It has under its direction in these various spheres of labour 59 ordained missionaries, 5 preachers, 113 male and female assistants, 43 native helpers, 24 churches and about 650 native communicants, 26 schools and 6596 pupils, and 6 printing-presses, from which have been issued more than 12,000,000 pages during the year. Its income for the year ending 1st May 1855 was nearly £54,000. All this for an institute which has been in existence only twenty years is, it must be admitted, indicative of an intensity of life and principle which augur favourably for the future of the body to which it owes its birth.

It may be well to mention here, for the sake of those who do not happen to be much acquainted with the ecclesiastical condition of the American Union, that besides the two influential denominations to which reference has just been made, there are no fewer than six other branches of the same family in the States. These are the Associate Presbyterian, the Associate Reformed, and the Reformed Presbyterian (three small sects commonly known by the name of the Scotch Secession Churches), the Cumberland Presbyterians, the German Reformed, and the Reformed Dutch.*

"I was much interested," says Dr Andrew Reed in his Narrative of the English Congregational Deputation's Visit to the American Churches,-"I was much interested in what I saw of the Dutch Reformed Church here. Their pastors are well-trained, orthodox, and godly men. Their congregations are of good size, and composed of persons of sincere piety and much steadiness of character, a steadiness, perhaps, a little inclining to immobility and formal profession." We give this quotation as illustrative of the singular power exercised to the present day over the churches of America by race and historical associations. This appears no less conspicuously in the existing characteristics of the Scotch Secession Churches referred to above. "All three," says Dr Baird, "maintain a state of strict isolation from other communions, and in their church psalmody confine themselves exclusively to Rouse's versions of the Psalms of the Bible." Curious it is to find in the midst of the most extreme political liberalism, ecclesiastical conservatism of the highest kind. It almost sounds like a contradiction in terms (though it is anything but that), to speak of a High-Church Yankee or an American Covenanter.

All the Presbyterian bodies combined, give the following statistical results:-6 general assemblies, 90 synods, 464 presbyteries, 6,145 ministers, 844 licentiates, 8,116 churches, and 696.318 communicants.

The only other large denomination deserving to be classed among the great evangelical churches of the Union, is the Methodist Episcopal Church. It holds the doctrinal opinions of the Wesleyan Methodists of England, and its ecclesiastical economy is, in all important points, identical with theirs. In 1844 it became divided into two sections, (the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church South) by the question of slavery. In 1855 these bodies stood thus:-that in the North had 7 bishops, 225 presiding elders, 4,814 effective ministers, 596,852 members, 271 home missionaries, and 34 in the foreign field.

Of course it would be utterly impossible to give within the limits of this article, any account of the smaller sects. These, as is well known, are numerous. It has, indeed, sometimes been made a ground of reproach against the Union, that there is so little uniformity of worship among its people. But to this charge it is certainly quite sufficient to answer, that America is in many respects, not a copy of England or Scotland, or Holland, but literally a transcript of the entire Protestantism of Europe. If we do not see here ecclesiastical denominations corresponding to the German, or Dutch, or Lutheran Churches of America, the reason is simply this, that our population was not so mixed and heterogeneous in its origin.*

In his seventh book, Dr Baird treats briefly of the "NonEvangelical Denominations of America," the Papists, the Unitarians, the Universalists, the Mormons, &c. Of all these the sect whose history is most interesting and instructive is that of the Unitarians, but as we shall probably have an opportunity, in our next number, of dealing with it fully in connection with one of its latest developments, we shall pass it by here without a single remark.

Indeed, we shall be able to find room now, for only one brief notice. The following figures represent the state of the Roman Catholic Church in 1856-dioceses 41, apostolic vicariates 2, archbishops 7, bishops 33, priests 1,780, (of whom 1,611

* Dr Baird gives this statistical abstract of the state of the evangelical churches. The Lutherans and Congregationalists are classed with the Presbyterians.

are in the ministry and 169 are professors in colleges,) churches 1,910, ecclesiastical seminaries 39, and clerical students, 460.

Mr Mackay is no great authority when he speaks of religion in the United States, (some of the mistakes indeed into which he falls in dealing with that subject are positively absurd), but we believe the following statement of his in regard to the policy of the Papacy is substantially correct. "The Roman Catholic Church, says he, "has in a manner abandoned the comparatively populous States of the seaboard, and fixed its attention upon the valley of the Mississippi. In this it has discovered a far-seeing policy. Nineteen-twentieths of this valley are yet under the dominion of the wilderness. But no portion of the country is being so rapidly filled with population. In fifty years its inhabitants will in number be more than double those of the Atlantic States. The Church of Rome has virtually left the latter to the tender mercies of the contending Protestant sects, and is fast taking possession of the great valley."

Mr Mackay then goes on to describe in an exaggerated style, the effects of this policy. In doing this, we have no doubt he has drawn from his imagination to give colouring to his picture. Things are not quite so bad as he would have us to believe. But as to the substantial accuracy of his report, no one, we suppose, will question it; and this only brings out, therefore, into still clearer relief, the grand duty of the Protestant churches of America, which is, as has been said, to maintain with all the energy they can put forth, that magnificent system of home. missions, which has already been pursued with such distinguished

success.

Dr Baird finishes his seventh book by a description of the state of theological opinion in America. It is certainly a valuable chapter-and we most readily acknowledge that we have read it with much interest and profit. But we cannot pass it by without expressing our regret that the author should have considered it his duty to introduce into his narrative the two paragraphs with which it closes.

We are there told that the "great achievement of American theology is, that it has placed the doctrines of the atonement for sin in the clearest light, by illustrations drawn from the nature of moral government." In other words, according to Dr Baird, the theology of America is coincident with those loose and dangerous views which assert or imply that the atonement of Christ was not, properly speaking, a sacrificial expiation of man's guilt, but was only a public demonstration of God's judicial righteousness. If this is a correct representation of the religious teaching of the Union, we can only say we are sincerely grieved to hear it. But we have reason to know that in many quarters Dr Baird's description is altogether repudiated. For proof of this

we shall cite one very competent witness-the principal organ of the Old School Presbyterians.

Referringto the remark quoted above, a writer in the "Princeton Review" for October last has these words :-"There is no such achievement of American theology, in any sound sense. There is no American school of orthodoxy which has placed the doctrine of the atonement in any clearer light than it was placed in by the reformed theologians. . . . For ourselves, and for all Presbyterians of our body, and all sound Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Moravians, we reject the fruit of every such achievement, and abide by the doctrine and illustrations which prevailed before the boast of American theology was ever heard.'

The last book in the volume describes the "efforts of the American churches for the conversion of the world." Upon this part of the work we have already drawn considerably, in noticing the missionary operations of the different denominations. We refer to it again, only to say, that putting out of account the earliest efforts made on behalf of the aborigines, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the earliest, and is still the greatest, missionary society in the Union, that there is no church in the States which does not take part in the work abroad, and that classing them altogether, the Protestant denominations of the American republic have a larger number of labourers in the foreign field than the Christian churches of any other country in the world.

We have thus passed in rapid review the various topics treated of by Dr Baird in his interesting and valuable volume. Enough has been said, we trust, at the least, to create in the reader a deeper interest than perhaps he has hitherto felt in the condition and prospects of Christianity in America.

The men who have gone forth from these elder lands to settle in that new and distant continent have not been content to sit under the shadow of the religious institutions of the countries from which they sprang. Protestantism has there struck down into the soil a deep and independent root. The American church bears now as few symptoms of having been a graft of recent years, as does the nation with which it is incorporated. Young, indeed, and fresh, and vigorous, it possesses, perhaps, more fulness of life, and certainly more spring and elasticity than the more ancient systems out of which it has grown; and we are certainly quite safe in hazarding the prediction, that if God withhold not his grace and guidance, a career of usefulness is in store for it unparalleled in the history of the Christian religion.

Altogether the spectacle presented to us on the other side of * In a late number of the New York Observer, there is even a report of a Unitarian Mission to India.

the Atlantic of a people, having a common origin, a common language, and a common religion with ourselves,-inhabiting, too, a district of country touching, on either side, upon the two great oceans, and inclosing in its heart a valley which has been described as, upon the whole, the most magnificent dwellingplace prepared by God for man's abode; and working out often, by painful and convulsive processes, important social, and political, and religious problems-such a spectacle is indeed deserving the earnest attention of every thoughtful inhabitant of the British Islands. And the perusal of Dr Baird's volume is well calculated to strengthen the desire which all good men, who do give their attention to this subject, must feel, that the way may be soon opened up for a more intimate intercourse between the orthodox churches of the two continents, that by correcting each other's inconsistencies, and exciting to love and to good works, and benefiting by the results of their respective experience, they may combine to hasten the coming of the one catholic kingdom, of which Jesus Christ is the living head.

ART. V.-The Rev. James Murdock, D.D.

JAMES MURDOCK was born, Feb. 16. 1776, at Westbrook, Middlesex County, Connecticut, of Protestant Scotch-Irish descent. His great-great-grandfather, John Murdock, was a wool-comber in Limerick, in Ireland, during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. He married Mary Munson, had one son and three daughters, lost all his property in the siege of Limerick in 1691, and died about the year 1695. His only son, Peter Murdock, born at Limerick in 1679, came to America about the year 1700, married Mary Fithin of East Hampton, on Long Island, where he spent most of his life. He accumulated a handsome property, and died at Westbrook in 1753, aged 74. His only child, John Murdock, was born at East Hampton in 1706, removed early to Westbrook, became a large farmer, was major of the provincial troops, deacon in the Congregational church, and judge in the Court of Common Pleas. He died at Westbrook in 1778, aged 72. His first wife was Phebe Sill of Lyme, who died ten months after marriage. His second wife was Frances Conklin of East Hampton. She bore him thirteen children, seven sons and six daughters, all of whom lived to maturity. She died in 1799, aged 86. Three of the sons of John Murdock graduated at Yale College; viz. Peter, graduated in 1755, and died the same year; Jonathan, graduated in 1766, became a Congrega* By De Tocqueville.